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Landmarks go dark to mark Earth Hour

The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and the ferris wheel are seen after their lights went out as seen from Sydney's Luna Park for the Earth Hour environmental campaign on 30 March, 2019.Peter Parks/AFP

The 13th edition of Earth Hour, organised by the World Wildlife Fund, will see 24 global landmarks and millions of people across 180 countries turn off their lights at 8:30 pm local time to highlight energy use and the need for conservation.

Australia is the first country to have taken part in the Earth Hour event on 30 March.

The Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge were plunged into darkness for an hour Saturday to raise awareness about climate change and its impact on the planet's vanishing biodiversity.

"We are the first generation to know we are destroying the world. And we could be the last that can do anything about it," the WWF said on its website.

WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O'Gorman told the AFP news agency that "Earth Hour still is the world's largest grassroots movement for people to take action on climate change".

"It's about individuals taking personal action but joining with hundreds of millions of people around the world to show that not only do we need urgent action on climate change but we need to be protecting our planet," he added.

Dozens of companies around the world have said they will join in this year's switch-off.

The event comes after some of the direst warnings yet on the state of Earth's natural habitat and species.

WWF's own "Living Planet" report in October said that 60 percent of all animals with a backbone - fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals - had been wiped out by human activity since 1970.

Another dataset confirmed the depth of an unfolding mass extinction event, only the sixth in the last half-billion years.

Paris's Eiffel Tower, New York's Empire State Building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa and the Acropolis in Athens are among the 24 global landmarks that will take part in Earth Hour.

Last year's event was observed in more than 7,000 towns and cities in 187 countries, according to organisers.